Carl Ruby is advocating for making Springfield an immigrant-friendly city.

Listen

Listening...

/

5:00

Immigration reform might be dead in Washington for now, but some local advocates are still on the case. One of those is long-time conservative activist and teacher Carl Ruby. He’s part of a new initiative called Welcome Springfield—a takeoff on Welcome Dayton—to work on making Springfield a more appealing place for immigrants.

He says there are a lot of misconceptions about the relationship between immigrants and businesses, including the idea that undocumented immigrants don’t pay taxes or contribute to economic growth. He points to immigrants throughout U.S. history who have founded companies (including Kraft, U.S. Steel, Yahoo and Google), and says immigrants are twice as likely as native-born citizens to found businesses.